


you'll be sorry in the morning

by Cantabo



Series: Incompleteness in Absence [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Growing Up, Multi, Pre-Scisaac - Freeform, Scott is a Bad Friend, Stiles is Pushed Out of the Pack, the pack gets better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:48:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cantabo/pseuds/Cantabo
Summary: “Hey, where the hell is Stilinski?”





	you'll be sorry in the morning

**Author's Note:**

> Small companion fic to the first part of this series, not necessary to read it I guess but everything would make a lot more sense if you do.

It’s, oddly enough, Jackson who notices that something's off.

“Hey, where the hell is Stilinski?” He asks, chewing his sandwich slowly. Everyone stops and turns to Stiles’ seat, which is empty today. In fact, when was the last time Stiles even ate lunch with them? Scott turns away from Allison and frowns, he hasn’t really talked to Stiles in a while, but he’s pretty sure Stiles was here this morning. He thinks he was here…

Wasn’t he?

Lydia frowns and narrows her eyes at his usual seat, pulling her phone out. Erica and Isaac are glancing around the cafeteria, confused. Even Allison is thinking back to when she last saw Stiles. She’s pretty sure it was a week ago... Fairly sure.

“I think we need to call Derek,” Lydia says, turning her phone so the rest of the table can see.

It’s Stiles’ face on a missing person’s flyer.

-

The pack meeting is nothing short of volatile. Derek is sitting in the corner with his head in his hands. Boyd watches from the sidelines, his irritation growing.

Everyone else is yelling at each other, blaming one another for why Stiles could have possibly run away. The sheriff won’t answer the phone or the door, and Stiles’ phone just goes straight to voicemail. Even Lydia and Danny’s combined efforts earlier in the day couldn’t track down anything. Danny had dejectedly shaken his head at Lydia and Jackson, and they had to tell the rest of the pack that not even Danny could get tabs on Stiles.

“You’re the one who stopped answering his text messages!”

“Yeah? Well you’re the one who stopped inviting him to pack meetings!”

“Don’t try to point fingers at me, you stopped calling him about research!”

“Hey!” Boyd cries, interrupting the literal finger pointing. Everyone stops to look at him.

“You’re all to blame. Scott, you stopped talking to him, and you were a bad friend. Isaac, you stopped inviting him to pack meetings. Lydia, you cut him out of all the research. Erica, you left him out of group messages. Derek, you didn’t even notice. You can’t call this a pack when we treated Stiles like that.”

“I don’t see you owning up to anything, Boyd,” Lydia snaps.

“Stiles and I have never been close. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t go along with you guys, I’m just as much at fault here. My point is that instead of pushing the blame around, maybe we should all just accept that and try to be a better pack in the future. Maybe we should give Stiles a reason to come back,” Boyd shouts, and everyone is stunned into silence. Derek stands up and nods at him.

“Boyd is absolutely right. We’ve been bad friends, and a bad pack. Stiles deserved better than that, and it’s at least partially our fault that he felt like he needed to run away.”

The dejected silence in the room is an accurate reflection of how everyone is feeling.

-

Things are hard, after that. The months after Stiles is gone weigh on them all, their guilt eating them alive little by little.

Eventually, however, they start to pull themselves together, forcing themselves to be less selfish and more mature.

Derek pulls himself out of whatever slump he’s been in and starts rebuilding the house, and as Scott and Allison feel the wedge in their relationship start to grow, Scott is around for the pack more.

“Never thought I’d see you willingly spend time with Derek and I,” Isaac says one day, pulling paint cans out of the back of the camaro. Scott frowns, but can’t fight the goading coming from Isaac, because he’s right. Scott never thought he’d see the day either, until Stiles left. Scott feels the absence of his best friend like a constant stitch in his side, and he can’t ever stop feeling it.

Scott wonders if this is how Stiles felt before he left. It’s awful, and he’ll never forgive himself for making Stiles feel this alone and alienated. Allison doesn’t really understand, and as her and Scott fall out of the honeymoon phase, there isn’t much left to build a relationship on. Scott and her both know that they’re coming to an end, but neither of them can bring themselves to be the ones to rip off the bandaid and end things for good.

Erica and Boyd have been a lot nicer recently, though. Erica’s quit trying to Olive Pendergast everyone into respecting her, and she’s mellowed out to a balance of brutal honesty and being horrifically snarky and clever.

They’re slowly pulling themselves together, and it’s a painful process. Scott’s relationship isn’t going to survive the year, and he’s just hoping it ends better than Lydia and Jackson’s relationship did.

Their breakup was, to put it gently, explosive. Blame was shoved and everyone got dragged in, and by the end of it the two of them couldn’t even look at each other. They both pretend the other is non existent now, and Scott isn’t sure if he hates that or the fighting more.

But at the same time, Scott and Isaac can have a transformers marathon and Isaac can be there for him but not try to fill in the holes that Allison and Stiles left. Erica has gotten better at talking to people, and she genuinely smiles at this point more than she smirks. Boyd can tell the filthiest jokes when he puts his mind to it, and Derek’s trying really hard to be a better person.

And it slowly gets better.

Derek makes them all help remodel the house, and makes them eat dinner together on Wednesdays, and they all have a group text that’s for things that aren’t supernatural (with the exception of the obscure memes Isaac posts in there about werewolves).

They graduate, and Scott and Allison have such a civil breakup it feels more like they’re saying goodbye for the summer instead of permanently, and Scott barely even feels bad when he finds out Allison and her dad moved to Maine shortly thereafter.

Scott goes to Isaac then, even though he really wants to go to Stiles, because while Scott likes Isaac (he likes Isaac a lot), he’s not Stiles, and Scott wants to talk about everything to Stiles. Isaac makes Scott laugh and feel that wonderful pang in his chest, but he isn’t Scott’s best friend.

Erica and Boyd get married, and Derek finishes the house, and they’re growing.

-

Derek has a hard time wrapping his head around Stiles’ disappearance. He’s torn between telling himself to learn from the experience and blaming the whole thing on himself. He forces himself to do things that Stiles had prodded at since they first met.

He made up with Scott and found some common ground, and he can actually get along with Scott now.

He rebuilt the Hale House, even if it took him almost two years to finish it.

He made a better pack, one that Stiles would be proud to be in, because it’s what Stiles deserved in the first place. It’s honestly what they all deserved, but Stiles is the only one who never gets to see it.

Some part of him thinks that Stiles will come back after a few months, but even after the pack apologizes to the Sheriff, the Sheriff learns about the supernatural crap, and everyone graduates, Stiles doesn’t come back.

It’s under the Sheriff’s prodding that Derek and Isaac take the police exams and get on the force, and things get even better from there, too. Derek feels like he has some more purpose than forging the way in life for a bunch of almost adults.

It’s not often talked about, but one time Isaac does mention to the Sheriff that they all really miss Stiles, and the Sheriff opens up in a rare moment about the letters he’s been getting from Stiles. He tells them that Stiles was in New England in the last letter, and pulls out his wallet to show them the pictures Stiles has sent of himself.

And Stiles is… different.

He’s almost unrecognizable as the twitchy kid with a buzz cut and no sense of self preservation. He’s got actual hair on his head and the smile on his face is one Derek hasn’t seen since the first few months he knew Stiles, and he’s tall and tanned and he’s got meat on his bones now, and he… he looks happy.

Derek feels like he’s got vertigo, and he can’t seem to sort out what the fuck is going on.

Isaac looks at Derek with a knowing face, the same one Derek gave to Isaac the first time Isaac came home from a date with Scott, and Derek chooses not to think about what he means.

-

Derek has pretty much written Stiles off as a lost cause, until the Sheriff breaks his leg. It’s been 4 years since Stiles left at this point, and Derek’s been doing really good. His pack is solid and strong, he’s the godfather to Lucas, Erica and Boyd’s son, and he’s the right hand man to the Sheriff. He likes his life, which is something he never thought he’d be able to say again.

It’s nothing to be all that concerned about, in the grand scheme of how bad some injuries on the job are, but Derek makes sure that they look after the Sheriff extensively, because he remembers the Sheriff proudly telling the station a week ago that Stiles was in Italy, and he doubts Stiles would be able to make it in time to check the Sheriff out of the hospital, so he tries to do everything to make sure the Sheriff is comfortable.

So, it’s needless to say that Derek is more than a little surprised to see Stiles walk into the Sheriff’s hospital room minutes after Derek does, a beautiful girl trailing behind him, bickering about magic and hikes, all while Stiles looks so fucking attractive and happy.

Derek has to force himself to breathe the rest of the day, and it’s not helpful when Isaac worms the story out of him and then laughs at him all through their shift that day.

Derek is so fucked.


End file.
